"How the Microsoft QA process will not disturb the game's development process"

(From May 7, 2002)

The following is an actual quote from a Bethesda Softworks developer regarding the Microsoft QA process.

"Microsoft's (and the Xbox's) rep is on the line every time a game comes out for the system. If the game sucks, the fans will blame the devs who made it; if the game crashes, the fans will primarily blame Xbox (even if it's not directly Microsoft's fault). They have a stringent certification process - there's a huge list of things that have to be right, in addition to not crashing, non-broken gameplay, etc. They won't fail a game because it doesn't fall under their definition of "fun", though - they aren't imposing those kinds of limits on games (for those fearing MS influence).

And there are always hardware issues - it's just a very specific kind of computer - but the key is that we can solve them and it works on all Xboxes (as compared to the near-infinite PC configs - DirectX helps, but it's not perfect). That's why you see few/none of those kinds of bugs.

We've been working really hard at this - we're making absolutely sure that you have a perfect experience when playing on the PC or Xbox. If anything. the PC version benefits (in terms of memory leaks, etc.) from the rigorous going-over that the Xbox version gets from Microsoft."

What we can learn from this quote: 1)First and foremost, that it is a neccesary step, and will make the game worth waiting for without bugs. 2)That there are fewer bug problems in the Xbox version of the game to begin with, because it was developed for a single computer-the Xbox-and not for as many different PC setups as possible. 3)That the PC version has actualy benefited from the optimization process the Xbox version has undergone, so the PC users can stop bad-mouthing the Xboxers now, please. :) And 4) Microsoft will not be suggesting any changes to the actual content of the game, and will only be looking for bugs, meaning that this process shouldn't take long! :)

-Ben (aka bensf81)BACK